Abstract

The use of miniaturized piezoelectric transducers integrated to a host composite material could enable the development of an on‐line ultrasound health monitoring system for composite structures. Preliminary testing has already demonstrated the suitability and practical feasibility of this kind of integrated system, but a better control of these features now seems to be necessary. And especially, since the exploited ultrasonic vibration modes for plate‐shaped structures are Lamb waves, the generation of desired Lamb modes should be mastered. Therefore, an original modeling approach has been developed, in order to help to design and optimize these ‘‘smart materials.’’ This modeling technique aims at determining the amplitude of each Lamb mode excited in a composite plate with surface‐bonded or bulk‐embedded piezoelectric elements. It consists of a coupling of the numerical finite‐element method (FEM) and the normal modes expansion method. Indeed, a limited finite‐element mesh of the transducer and its close vicinity is built. Then the numerically computed mechanical field is introduced as a forcing function into the normal modes’ equations. In addition, the adequacy and accuracy of this modeling method have been experimentally demonstrated by using composite specimens containing small integrated piezoelectric elements.